STEVEN PARRINO
1958-2005, United StatesSteven Parrino is best known for his signature ‘misshaped’ monochromes with slashed, torn, or twisted canvases. An established pioneer in performance and video art, his radicalism was born out of a deep understanding of the history of painting and the avant-garde. The vibe of his work derives from his other loves: Pop iconography and the subversive counterculture of the Hell’s Angels, the occult, and the No Wave and punk rock movements. His commitment to the belief that ‘radicalism comes from content and not necessarily form’ radiates throughout his artistic practice, where he utilises disciplines ranging from painting, photo collage, and drawing to film, video, and performance. At the end of the 1980s Parrino’s work began to diverge aesthetically. Never completely comfortable with the ‘Neo-Geo’ label, his work took on a darker, more monumental character. The iconic monochrome paintings took shape as radical, nihilistic, pop sculptural objects—a transformation that fused historical tradition with the defunct notion of the avant-garde.
Parrino was born in 1958 in New York, and died in 2005 in New York. He received an AAS in 1979 from SUNY Farmingdale, New York, and a BFA in 1982 from Parsons School of Design, New York. Parrino’s work has been exhibited in major exhibitions worldwide, including Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland (2000); Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany (2000); Contemporanea, Milan (2001); Nuremberg Museum, Germany (2002); Swiss Institute, New York (2002); Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2003); Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2004); Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany (2005); PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2005); and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2006). Solo exhibitions include Massimo De Carlo Arte Contemporanea, Milan (2000); Exit/Dark Matter, FriArt, Fribourg, Switzerland (2002); Steven Parrino Videos 1979–Present, Circuit, Lausanne, Switzerland (2002); Massimo De Carlo Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy; Galerie Jean Brolly, Paris (2003); Steven Parrino: Retrospective, 1977–2004, Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva (2005–2007); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2007); Born to Be Wild: Hommage an Steven Parrino, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland (2009); and Dancing on Graves, Power Station, Dallas (2017).
Courtesy Gagosian
Recently Exhibited
Representative Artworks
Steven Parrino, Untitled, 1993–2005. Enamel on canvas. 104 x 85 x 2 in2 © Steven Parrino. Courtesy the Parrino Family Estate and Gagosian.
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Exhibition view: Steven Parrino, Gagosian, Basel (3 February–19 March 2022). © Steven Parrino. Courtesy the Parrino Family Estate and Gagosian. Photo: Annik Wetter.
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